


Do What Must Be Done

by captainjackspearow



Series: Doing What Must Be Done [1]
Category: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Video Game)
Genre: (as per the fromsoftware experience), (ships sort of implied but not main focus of fic), Albeit Majorly Fucking Amended because let's be real that shit was sad as hell, All of this is expanding on what's referenced in canon, Body Horror, Centipede Theory, Character Death, Character Study, Emma and Genichiro get a slightly better ending, Entomophobia, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Isshin gets a slightly worse ending, M/M, Medical Abuse, Return Ending, Shura!Isshin, Spoilers, Spoilers for Purification and Severance, The Sculptor gets a slightly better ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 20:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18724648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainjackspearow/pseuds/captainjackspearow
Summary: He thinks of a war-torn field, of men taking orders, of how much blood has been shed over Kuro, how much more is about to be. Of what it felt like to want to tear Owl to pieces the first time he saw his face, the pain of gripping his blade, the sting of it to his cheek. He will die for this.(Owl finds an orphan on a battlefield. Isshin finds an orphan on a battlefield. Orangutan finds an orphan on a battlefield. Hirata claims an orphan from a battle of a different kind. The monks of Senpou take and make countless orphans. The hand that feeds does not do so out of kindness.)An AU fix-it for the Return Ending, focusing on the five orphans and the decisions along the way that led them to seek an end to this stagnation, seek severance, seek something else entirely.





	1. Chapter 1

The battlefield is thick with smoke and ash, the heavy scent of death smeared across the air like thoughtless men had wiped it there and disregarded it with their dying breaths – rot, bile, acrid caustic _something_ mingling with blood-soaked mud, seeping into the dirt.

 

Carrion birds feast on the lifeless corpses of the dead, tearing sinew from bone.

 

_Gross._

His stomach twists at how he envies them.

 

And here is his prize – a fallen general, a dirtied blade, caked over with the rusted gore of those he slaughtered.

 

What is he looking for out here? Retribution?

 

The corpses are silent. They do not help him, and he _burns, they took everything from-_

_-_ there is a blade to his cheek, the sharp edge digging in hard enough to split skin, he can feel the blood dripping down his face, staining his scarf further.

 

_What’s the matter, stray? Nothing left to lose?_

He will not dignify that with a response. He reaches out and grips the looming, gray-haired stranger’s blade, hard enough to dig the sharp edge of the katana into his palm, spilling blood, locking eyes. He will not humor this man. If he’s going to cut him down, he better _hurry up and goddamn do it already._

 

The man does not.

 

Instead, he stares him down in the Ashina sunset with big blinking eyes, still relaxed, like this is some kind of fucking _game_ to him, like-

 

_Well, would you look at that. Fascinating._

_Will you join me, starving wolf?_

 

            -like he _understands._

 

And he reaches into his robes, and pulls out a small ball of rice, wrapped in wax paper, and tosses it to him.

 

It tastes like the blood on his hands, of iron and metal. It is astoundingly delicious.

 

***

 

The coup was messy business for everyone, and what little patience his mother tries to foster in him is lost when plague rips through the village at breakneck pace. There is no meaning to it, no method to its contagion – the physicians were quickly overwhelmed trying to quarantine the infected.

 

_Dragonrot._

 

There is no cure. There is barely sufficient supply to treat symptoms, what with the war effort.

 

He watches his mother cough blood for days, pieces of messy tissue, stained with a deep yellow, alone in a home with a woman gasping out her death rattle.

 

And then, nothing.

 

_Why did he not die, with her?_

 

Left alone, he resorts to crawling the still-blistering battlefields for scraps of salvage – food if he’s lucky, something to eat – to sell to anyone he can.

 

Ashina is bruised, beaten, _poisoned._

 

A general finds him, coughing from hunger and smoke inhalation over the bloody mess of a man one day, heavy rain coming down in droves around the both of them, and he nearly cries as he’s dragged off by the back of his shirt.

 

His last words will be vindictive, then. _Fuck you all. Diseased bastards. Look what you’ve done to Ashina._

_Boy, didn’t your mother ever tell you the battlefield’s no place for a child?_

_My mother’s dead._

The general’s eyes soften, with a hint of something he’s seen in a couple men’s faces before, but can’t quite place – intrigue, perhaps?

_You have a tenacity about you. What would you say to preserving Ashina instead?_

_I don’t want to be a soldier._

_Not as just any common soldier, no, boy – but as family. There’s a passion in you for this land. We could use that._

Lightning flashes as the storm grows stronger, and he feels a building rage, how dare-

 

He tosses something at the boy – rice.

 

It tastes sweet, like home.

 

***

 

Hungry.

 

There is no food. The fires that came – they burnt everything: the fields, the trees, the farms, the _people,_ she can still smell the flesh cooking, the ash on the air.

 

It makes her mouth water even as it sickens her.

 

A little farther ahead, just outside what was once the tree line, a hobbling mass of a creature slowly continues its trek. Hunched over, it grips the scabbed-over stump of its left shoulder, shrieking thick, low obscenities that she can’t quite make out.

 

Some wounded monkey that survived the flames.

 

If it’s wounded, she might kill it.

 

The thought crosses her mind briefly and she has to force it back down with disgust, because she knows the weeks of getting by on mere scraps at best have weakened her, and she’s not thinking rationally.

 

The monkey is probably hungry too. Best to continue following it and let it lead her to food.

 

_Snap._

A twig, brittle from the wildfires, breaks in two under her bare foot.

 

The monkey’s head whips around towards her at a speed she didn’t know was possible, and oh, he looks _angry_. For a moment, she can almost see the hatred burning in his eyes, can feel it in his glare, but after a breath it passes, and he just shakes his head and turns away.

 

She follows.

 

He stops.

 

She stares at him, indignant. She will not starve alone.

 

He has not killed her yet, and if he will, then at least it will be over.

 

Anything, _anything_ , would be better than this ache in her belly, this painful burning-

 

- _stagnation._

 

The figure huffs, and then she realizes what he’s clutching

 

-he’s holding _rice,_ a half-eaten ball of it, sticking to his dirty fingers, where did he even _find_ it among the dead and the dying, a _monkey_ , it has to be a miracle.

 

She holds out her hand, _crying_.

 

She has never wanted anything more in her life.

 

The orangutan, hard-eyed, softens and tosses her a piece.

 

It tastes like food, and she has never been so grateful for second chances.

 

***

 

The Divine Heir’s birth is a gritty and miraculous affair. His mother, exhausted by a complicated labor and war-depleted resources, bleeds out on the birthing bed. The boy cries and wails, and the midwife lays him at his mother’s breast for a moment, allowing him a goodbye.

 

She sits back up in a flurry of sakura petals and screams.

 

The news spreads rapidly, and the boy changes hands countless times before his first revolution around the sun.

 

What becomes of his father, Kuro never knows. He has heard of his mother, and has since released her from his pact. He prays she has found peace, and fears she has not.

 

He is seven when it happens.

 

The clashing of spears against armor. The air grows hazy around him, swirling with smoke and mist – the beams of the old temple he has taken shelter in have caught fire, and he knows he needs to run, but-

 

            - _mother?_

There are butterflies.  A woman, he _knows_ her, he cannot make out a face, there is too much smoke and there should not be so many _moths_ – his lungs are heavy with panic-

 

-and she flies away, and he is alone and _terrified,_ bawling in the burning temple, the moths _eating away at him,_ he wants his mother, his uncle, his-

 

- _Wolf?_

The illusion shattered, Wolf tells him to run, to do what must be done, to spare him the sight of bloodshed that he himself was never spared, so he curls up on the stairs, flinching at the sound of metal against metal, kunai sinking into soft flesh, Wolf’s pained noises, the Lady Butterfly’s manic laughter.

 

Eventually, the cut of a blade, and then the sounds fade to the slow crackle of a burning building and the blood pounding in his ears.

 

_Glad you’re alive, boy._

He gasps, turning to his left to see a hulking, bloodied figure. The other Hirata shinobi, a heavily wounded Owl, limps towards him clutching a wound partway down his chest.

 

_Are they still at it, in there?_

He shakes his head. He’s scared to go see, scared what he might find.

 

_Stay here. I’ll go see who won, and clean up after my son if need be._

Owl returns several moments later, the wound on his front freshly bloodied from the exertion, clutching his sword.

 

_He’d have got her. Part of the temple collapsed on him, from the fire. Finished her off, just to be sure._

He gives Kuro a meaningful look – calculated, beady eyes glinting in the firelight – as he slumps back against the wood paneling of the hallway.

 

_You’ve got one minute, boy, to say your goodbyes before he kicks it. Make them count._

The meaning is clear, Wolf is _dying,_ dying for him, he didn’t want any of this, he doesn’t _want_ to use his blood, but-

 

His head _aches_ from the smoke and the illusions and something winding deep in his gut begins to understand why people kill for this, for what he can do, and the thought almost shocks him out of it altogether, but he can’t just throw what Wolf just did for him away like that.

 

He doesn’t want to be alone again.

 

He won’t know. He won’t tell him. Just once.

 

_Loyal wolf, take my blood and live again._

 

He drags Wolf’s burnt, bloodied body up the stairs and through a broken window, all the way to the tree line by the river. Digging him out of the fire is tricky and painful to say the least, but it does not leave a tangible scar. He will survive. Wolf’s killed most of the bandits around the central building complex, and the thoughtfulness of that almost has him weeping, because he could have _run, Wolf never once thought of himself._

He does not think of the Owl, and his matted, bloodied feathers, burning in the temple. He mutters a soft prayer to the gods, and hopes he finds his rest along with his uncle.

 

Wolf does not remember anything of the attack, once he recovers several hours later.

 

He hands Kuro a piece of jasmine candy, biting into a piece of the same, and tells him firmly to keep his head down while he scouts around to see who’s survived, still burnt and limping.

 

It is floral and sweet, but the flavor is lost in the sudden drain of color, a gray patch across the skin of Wolf’s face. He will pass it off as a burn for the next three years, none the wiser.

 

***

 

She does not remember what it was like to live among family on Mount Kongo.

 

She does, unfortunately, remember what it was like to live among friends.

 

She does not regret her friends, but the memories _hurt,_ ache like the pain of the changes forced upon them, the clawing in her stomach and the crawling through her veins, the overwhelming gnawing of grief.

 

There was solidarity, in sharing their burdens with each other. Memories of home, of families now dead or _worse_ , the fear of the unknown, the discomfort, the spasms, convulsions, _were they the next to die?_

 

They’d watched their friends fall victim to the parasites of the rejuvenating waters. Some were eaten alive by the brood, incapable of serving as hosts. Others, well, the monks simply got the balance incorrect.

 

And they suffered dearly for it.

 

Twitching piles of meat, if they were lucky. She tries not to think about the ones who were not.

 

She thinks of her parents. She thinks of the monks cutting them down, the way her father expelled blood the same way her body convulses, vomiting partially congealed eggs, when one hit him in the sternum.

 

She thinks of the true Divine Child they mention, and feels a visceral, burning _rage._

 

_Nothing is worth this._

The other children all die off, some rapidly, others lingering. The worst are those who survive the incubation along with her, but, well…

The monks take blood, periodically. One points to the small translucent granules within her own, rinsing it before her.

 

_Very good._

 

They gleam with an unnatural radiance.

 

Satisfied with their success, the monks cut open all the others, the ones whose blood is consistently empty, to examine where they went awry.

 

There is a feast that night. Her blood is harvested, spilled from her palms, then rinsed. The monks gather and eat from the palms of her hands as she weeps.

 

_What is this?_

_It is like rice. A divine, life-giving rice. And you have become divine in your own right._

_A divine child, of the rejuvenating waters._

She tries a piece. It tastes of salt, of blood. It is sickening.

 

And yet, with each bite, with each cry of joy from the monks, each tear, she cannot help but smile.

 

She is alive. She will live, for all of them. They cannot kill her now, for rice is precious.


	2. Chapter 2

The boy will not cooperate and it frustrates him beyond belief, because the Ministry is breathing down his back, they’re almost to the doorstep, and Isshin will never forgive him if he fails him here.

 

He will be cut down like a dog, and kicked to the curb. The war will make its way back to their countryside, Ashina will be ravaged, burnt, overcome, rent asunder, its people decimated for years to come. Even those who do not fight.

 

The Divine Heir doesn’t understand. He’s only a child, he’s never _seen_ war, what it does to people, what it does to places. He will never get it through the boy’s damned head while-

 

Of course.

 

He thinks his Shinobi will come in, waltzing in like some heroic mutt.

 

Genichiro inhales deeply.

 

Then he will have some insurance.

 

There will be no honor in their duel. There was none in the first, and he does not expect Wolf to approach the second with the same respect he did previously. He will not fight an undying man a mere mortal, even with Tomoe’s heretical arts.

 

If the boy will not serve him, he will do anything for the sake of Ashina. He will surrender anything.

 

Everything.

 

He unwraps the bundle of sediment he pilfered from Emma’s stock – a dark, red-tinted black, smelling of rot and strange herbs.

 

He will forsake humanity itself.

 

And he tilts his head forward, and _inhales,_ and it reeks of blood and must and burns the whole way down.

 

***

 

Grappling swiftly, kicking his way through the vilehands, he makes his way to the peak of Ashina Castle, towards Kuro, he _must_ find the boy-

 

-he can hear him. His young voice is smooth, but a barely tempered rage bubbles just below the surface, a warning.

 

_I remember you well._

 

_I heard stories, confirmations of your death, yet – here you are._

He peeks over the railing to quickly size up the scene before interrupting. Thankfully Kuro is unharmed, though his expression is twisted in the distrust he might conceal in his voice from those who spend less time at his side.

 

And seated in the center, cross-legged as if in thoughtful meditation, resting his chin atop playful hands is-

 

He gasps, swearing beneath his breath, feeling his blood run hot and cold all in a second.

 

Kuro’s voice reeks of venom as he turns to face the shinobi. _What are you plotting, Owl?_

His father, head bowed, meets Kuro’s gaze with his single eye, challenging. _Plotting? I would do no such thing. Now, my lord,_ and he raises his arms, gesturing towards the boy, _I must ask that you accompany me._

_This old bird has but one desire._ Feet shuffle across tatami mats as the old man rises to one knee, and it _is_ Owl, every hulking inch of him, straight from the grave and into Wolf’s nightmares and dream come true.

 

_To protect the Divine Heir from those who might take his esteemed blood._

Thank the gods. He’s come to fulfill the code while Wolf’s away, running errands for Kuro, and he flushes with shame, but rises as if to enter, when-

 

His lord shakes his head, spitting the words now, no longer feigning politeness. _The Dragon’s Heritage has seduced you too. There is nothing to discuss. Take your leave._

_I would, my lord, but..._

_I’m so stunned by this view, I’d like to take it in a while longer._ He stands to his full height, towering over Kuro, who stops in his tracks, still turned away, and clasps a large hand to his tiny shoulder.

_I’ll leave when I’ve had my fill._

Wolf can’t listen any longer, can’t hold silent – there’s only so much eavesdropping he can handle, Owl’s _alive,_ the castle is under attack, his lord is being threatened, and his father is… They need to speak, he clambers over the balcony just in time to give a nod to Kuro who, wide-eyed, takes the opportunity to stomp away, before he turns to-

 

_Father._

Owl smells the same – of blood and dusty feathers, strange herbs and steel. _To think you were still alive._

The old man shrugs proudly. _That was my design._

He opens his mouth to protest, to scream – he _mourned,_ damn him, all those years he beat himself up for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and the memory the bell charm showed him brought the pain all rushing back, and Owl didn’t have the _decency_ to let him _know_ -

 

_But the same can be said for you – I was certain you died that night._

 

He knows. Owl smirks, and he _knows,_ the lilt in his voice is so telling, and Wolf can’t not admit it, sheepishly, what Kuro did for him.

 

_Ah. That’s it!_

_What’s it?_

_The Divine Heir’s power, the Dragon’s blood, must be mine._

_Father, what the-_

This is madness.

 

_Remember the first rule of the code._

He does, he remembers it so vividly, because it was the last _fucking thing_ Owl said to him, those were his _dying words-_

_As your father, I order you to forsake your master. From this moment, he is your master no more._

Slow down, slow DOWN.

 

_Forsake… the Divine Heir?_

_Listen to me, Wolf. Obey your father’s command, and forsake the Divine Heir._

This is madness. He thinks of Mibu Village, the poor child in Senpou temple, everything he’s seen. Kuro’s aim is too important. He must see it through.

_I cannot do as you ask._

_You… what?_ His father’s gasp is for show, fake wounds masking visceral anger beneath. _A shinobi showing the likes of… compassion?_

He shakes his head, spitting on the ground, sneering his lip, and Wolf bites his own as he forces himself to stare the man down. He will not cry. He will not agree to this.

 

He thinks of a war-torn field, of men taking orders, of how much blood has been shed over Kuro, how much more is about to be. Of what it felt like to want to tear Owl to pieces the first time he saw his face, the pain of gripping his blade, the sting of it to his cheek. He will die for this.

 

_Unthinkable… Such a miserable display._

_Why, boy? Why can’t you understand your father’s will? Have you forgotten the Shinobi Code?_ Owl shakes his head, putting on a display of his own – sobbing the words between the fingers of his hand. The crocodile tears are for guilt, as are his words, but the undercurrent of a direct order is a threat of wrath. Disobedience will be punished; Wolf knows all too well.

_A code must be determined by the individual. This is what I’ve decided…_

Because it’s easier than explaining, and he knows he won’t get anywhere with arguing, they’ll have to cross blades regardless, he’s defied Owl, and with Owl, everything ends in a fight.

He turns back to look at the lump of a man, head in his hands, good eye peeking out.

 

Owl’s chest is partially bared at this angle, lit by the Ashina sunset between the feathers of his habitual mantle.

 

There is no scar.

 

_Just as my master did._

The half-choked sobs continue, as his back is turned, but the ruse is exposed, and he tunes his ears for the sound of a blade unsheathing, the soft scrape of metal against leather, and suddenly they both lunge forward, meeting in the center of the dojo, and he is just as impossibly large as Wolf remembers, he feels like such a child, but he has grown _fangs_ and he will use them if he has to.

 

He has two chances. Owl has one. They press steel against steel, locked in their stances, and he mentally runs through what weaknesses he can remember from the years of training. Owl leaves his back open. Owl has poor depth perception. Owl has-

 

Owl grunts. _Seems you’ve grown, if just a little._

He flips the blade and Wolf goes for a swing, if only to get him to clear some distance for him to think _._

 

_Have it your way, young wolf._

_Enough talk!_ He holds his blade ready.

_Been a while since we did this! Give me your all!_

It is not a playful sparring match, not Owl’s strange brand of harsh Shinobi training, but a bitter, grueling duel. A duel is overstating things: Owl’s playing dirty, but he didn’t expect a clean fight. Not after Genichiro. A grenade catches him in the shoulder, and he feels ill, something viscerally wrong – a poison, the herbal smell from earlier, but this isn’t Owl’s usual brand, no, he’d come _prepared_ for something like this, and Wolf gags as he parries Owl’s sweeping blows, unable to bring himself to swallow even a mouthful of water to keep himself going, and he feels a familiar blade pierce him through his lower back.

 

Gritting his teeth through the pain, he looks down, and can only cling to one thought as he bleeds out on the tatami.

 

It’s the same sword.

 

_One! The parent is absolute. Their will must be obeyed! Yet,_ and he smirks, as he holds his stance, waiting for Wolf to crawl back to his feet, the tear in his abdomen knitting itself back together even as it still stains his robes, the mats on the floor, a deep crimson, _I’m still sensing some insubordination._

It’s the same sword.

 

The anger bubbling beneath his skin fuels his fire, he can taste the blood and poison in his mouth.

 

He stares up at the twisted man before him, and he has _everything to lose,_ he will not let him use Kuro for this.

 

The cycle ends here. He has never been so sure of his path.

 

One of them would die, from the moment they first locked eyes. Wolf was too full of anger, had had too much stolen from him by the bloodlust of others, and he would die as many times as it took to not fall prey to it himself. And Owl saw a tool, not a child that day.

 

Owl whimpers as he stumbles back, when Wolf scores a solid hit to his shoulder, feigning true injury, repentance. Wolf knows better by now.

 

That’s bait.

 

He’s glad Kuro has the sense to stay inside, because he has no doubt that Owl will stoop to using him as a shield.

_Death of a shadow. You taught me that well, at least._

And he takes the damn sword, and pitches it off the roof. He doesn’t care where it lands.

 

For the third time, now, he is an orphan.

 

He wants to curl up in the corner of the dojo and die again, crawl into a battlefield and rot, but-

 

But he has a choice, and he’s made it. This only serves to prove Kuro’s point – the dragon’s blood leads men to do terrible things.

 

There will be other battlefields, other families wrecked and torn asunder. Other starving children, scampering amidst corpses for salvaged swords to kill and whet their teeth in misplaced vengeance. They will be taken advantage of.

 

Unless, and he stares at the lifeless body of the man he once called his second father, they fix this.

 

They will fix this.

 

(He cries anyway, after Emma helps him dispose of the body, after he attends to Kuro, once he has a moment to himself. He curls up by the Sculptor’s Idol in the dojo to watch the sun set, pulls the scarf over his nose, and lets the tears he’s been holding back come freely. They flow hot and heavy down his cheeks, flooding his mouth with salt, leaving the fabric damp against his face.

 

He’s no shinobi now, and the only man who can chastise him for it is dead.)

 

***

 

_Wolf._

_I am relieved to see that you are safe._

_And Owl…?_

 

_I killed him._ Wolf’s voice is flat, his eyes distant. They do not meet Kuro’s own. It is a terrible thing, Kuro thinks, to regain a father and lose one in an instant, even if the father is a lying scumbag like that.

 

He wonders how much Wolf remembers of that night at Hirata these days, whether the memories have returned with time, how much Wolf overheard, but all he can offer is a simple apology: _I’m sorry._

_Lord Kuro-_

_I’m sorry-_

Wolf cuts him off, gripping him gently by the hem of his sleeve, looking up into his eyes, and there is a firm determination in his face, even as Kuro can see pain.

_I did what had to be done._

He is tearing up now, he cannot help it, Divine Heir or no. He is tired of Wolf making sacrifices for him, for running himself ragged to the depths of Ashina itself to find this and that while he’s trapped in a library, and now he’s gone and ruined this as well.

 

Wolf shakes his head and pulls a withered branch from his pockets.

 

Of course Owl had it. Of course.

 

_We’re a step closer to the Fountainhead Incense._ Wolf smiles, and it’s so like him to focus on the positives.

 

_I’ve found something that may help us._

_Myself as well. Let us compare notes._

 

The tales Wolf tells of Mibu Village are unnerving, but he has found the palanquin and the gateway Kuro’s texts speak of, and on his back he wields _the sword that kills those who cannot die._

 

He has to sit down when Wolf speaks of the other divine child, though it takes some effort to press the information out of the man. The few details he extracts make his head spin. As if he needs further proof of the corruption his blood’s mere existence – the _thought_ of such power – brings to man.

 

All of this makes him sick.

 

At least they’re ready to send Wolf off.

 

It is the first time he has bled, and it is strangely cathartic, after the day’s events. Wolf’s concern bothers him – Wolf _died_ but an hour before, and he knows he means well, but none of this is fair. He is tired of duty, he is tired of loyalty, he is tired of meaningless fighting and good people suffering for the sake of a curse that he cannot wrench from his body soon enough.

 

Emma is called to see to his wound, and she offers to tend to Owl’s corpse, to which Wolf gives a noncommittal grunt, assenting to her help. She shakes her head and mutters something about shinobi.

 

Kuro has a feeling she wants to be certain he’s dead this time. He can’t exactly blame her.

 

Wolf gives him a nod, and there’s a hint of concern in the expression, but Kuro gives him his leave to go see to Isshin, to make certain the attack on the palace is truly under control, and finally, _blessedly,_ for the first time since he has been brought here, dragged kicking and all but screaming by Genichiro’s servants, he is left alone in the room.

 

So now he can cry.

 

He curls up on the bench next to the incense holder and inhales the smoke deeply, tears streaming down his face. He cannot smell what Wolf does, the sweetness of flowers. Just nostalgia and blood, with a hint of smoke.

 

He mutters to himself, rocking back and forth, for he must keep it together.

 

They’re almost there.

 

_We’re almost there._

_Yes._

He will do it.

 

_Do… What must be done._

He will sever this bitter curse of immortality, even if he has to tear it from his own chest. His own death is meaningless in this. Wolf has died countless times, the people of Ashina linger and die of dragonrot on the daily because a bird tricked him as a child, tricked them both, and as long as there’s a divine heir, this profane depravity will continue.

 

He must ask Wolf to do something about those monks. The very idea of reproducing this curse, even imperfectly, after everything, a meaningless death, is unnerving.

 

He turns towards a soft pattering from the screen behind him.

 

Emma is always muttering something about rats.

 

Wolf will bring the blade down if he asks. He must.

 

He must. For the both of them, he must.

 

***

 

The Shinobi, when she first meets him, is utterly bedraggled. Like the others before, he’s come for the blade.

 

She warns him, pressing frustration in her voice, but he does not listen. None do. Their bloodlust will not be sated so easily.

 

She stares at his body, face down her feet.

 

_Why is it, I wonder? Are they not loath to die?_

She decides she likes him the moment he not only does not balk when she calls the Dragon’s Heritage a curse, but moreover agrees with her.

 

Except it’s immediately shattered. Of course. Of course the one who serves the Divine Heir of the true Dragon’s Heritage would wander into her sanctum, to pull the mortal blade from its long-held sheathe.

 

_Why do you seek the Mortal Blade?_ The question escapes her lips, but she already knows the answer. He has come to purge the corruption from this place. She has watched him through the walls, heard the spirits of her friends speak of his struggles against the creatures that have become of the monks. The Divine Heir must have ordered him to cleanse Senpou Temple, and quite honestly, she cannot blame him.

 

But, and she cannot meet his eye as he gazes upon the iridescent blade, it is criminally unfair that the first to meet its edge will be herself.

 

The only one who sought nothing.

 

His answer brings a sigh of relief that she did not know she was holding even as it burns behind her eyes.

 

_The Divine Heir begrudges the power of the Dragon’s Heritage?_

The man nods.

 

_How strange fate can be._ To so casually throw away something she would have died for – her friends _did_ die for – all those years ago.

 

She does not know if it is right, what his lord is playing at, toying with severance. Everything she has seen has taught her the contrary. But she cannot begrudge the Shinobi of the Divine Heir his intent.

 

_The Dragon’s Heritage undeniably corrupts the lives of men. And I share the Heir’s feelings about that truth, at least._

 

She cannot take back what has been done to her, nor can she take back what the harvest – rice spilled from her reshaped body, couched in the blood of hundreds of children – has undoubtedly inflicted on the temple, on the mountain. On the country. She shudders to think how far the corruption has spread, the bugs, the grains.

 

But she will help with this, as she can. And the man before her is a merciful one.

 

She tells him to hold out his hand. Rice, for the first time, is freely given, and he marvels at the miracle of it as it pours forth. She does not tell him the horror interwoven with the seeming splendor, but she can see his mind turning it over in his eye, and he at least has the sense not to ask.    

 

The text he brings her is puzzling to say the least, a holy book on enlightenment, addressed to her of all things. While the Shinobi scratches his head, she knows what “blessed by the worm” means, she’s not stupid, but the message below, what’s taken for granted – the holy dragon’s origins were in the west?

 

_He said you must be lonely. I found him begging forgiveness from your friends._

She grips the edges of the withered tome. If he wanted forgiveness, he could beg it from her doorstep.

_He also said you wanted to know the reason for your fate. He thought you might find it here._

_Only more mysteries. I cannot help but detest them._

_You do not owe that man his atonement, your grace._

 

_***_

She will give him the rice. If it keeps him alive, he will not have to use the Divine Heir’s blood, and the Dragonrot will not spread. She will give him the rice.

 

She coughs.

 

He finds her, keeled over upon her cushion, clutching bloodied hands, and returns shortly after with persimmons.  She sends him on his way. He has business to take care of, his own divine heir to tend to, but she ties a small parcel of rice for him.

 

A peace offering. Perhaps in another life, they could have been friends.

 

She knows what happens if they are successful.

 

Why must they die? Why are they so loathe to stay alive, to kill themselves to clean up the messes of the world around them?

 

There _has_ to be a better way.

 

***

 

The wind whistles through the patchwork roofs of the Halls of Illusion, a fine-falling snow slowly blanketing the central tree as she sits amongst the maple leaves to think.

 

There is a better way, perhaps. But it is asking a lot of her.

 

She sits there for what might be hours, might be days, meditating. Her friends join her by her side, scurrying away only at the occasional approach of Kotaro, who reminds her to eat. They do eat – the Divine Heir sent his Shinobi back with rice balls, and the unexpected gesture of kindness makes her uncertain. They are sweet.

 

It is the first time she does not taste blood in the rice.

 

Footsteps send them scattering. They are not the heavy footfalls of Kotaro.

 

Sekiro, as he insists she call him, sits by her side.

 

_I don’t want to lose them._ She is this close to telling him, and the pain in his eyes tells her everything she needs to know, for he must certainly know by this point what severance is asking of the Divine Heir and of himself, but the alternative is-

 

Just as it always has been. She becomes vessel to that pain instead.

 

Kuro has never had to know death or dying. He has never been mortal, never known what it’s like to bleed until Sekiro took the mortal blade from her sanctum. He has never writhed on the floor from the pain of inhuman experiments, never watched his friends bleed out, be eaten _alive,_ and then have to choose to lose them _again_.

They comfort her, as best they can. She is made vessel for their pain as well.

 

She thinks on the rice.

 

He never asked for this either. None of them did – herself, her friends, the Divine Heir, nor Sekiro, whose arm glimmers with an undead vigor.

 

She will trade her pain for his life, then. She has a lifetime of experience of bearing it. She can stomach a little more, to be certain that no other children are put through it.

 

_Shinobi of the Divine Heir, there is an alternative. There is something I would like to discuss. I believe we should not aim to sever the Dragon’s Heritage, but instead to return it to its rightful place._

_The Dragon’s Heritage and those connected to it… it is only right that they return home to the west, to the birthplace of the divine dragon._

_Meaning?_

_Lord Kuro’s immortality, carried by a cradle, and those who seek to follow suit._

She inhales deeply.

 

_I… I shall become the cradle._

_You’re sure of this?_

_Of course._

Sekiro exhales deeply.

 

_I am the only surviving child of the Rejuvinating Waters. Death does not come easily to me._

When has more death solved anything?

He brings her the snake viscera with alacrity that suggests they’re running out of time. The shade of red is as she expected, a deep dark crimson, stained like the inside of a great fruit. Like the inside of a person, actually, turned from within, but she’s not going to say that before him.

 

_You’re actually going to eat them?_ There is a genuine concern in his voice.

 

She will. She must.

 

It does not taste of persimmons.

 

Later, she can hear him pounding on the door and she wants to _scream_ , from the pain of it all, from the added noise, because she told him to stay away, because this isn’t even the worst of it, he doesn’t know what it was like, what the monks did to her, but all she can do is groan and pray it ends quickly.

 

She feels her tears turn to ice, and how _fitting,_ that she is happy to feel herself sob.

 

She understands now. Immortality, once stolen, can only be returned with tears, graciously given.

 

***

 

She would rather be anywhere but Ashina castle right now.

 

The ministry has infiltrated the lower floors, fighting their way up to the peak. It was all she could do to smuggle Kuro out through the passages leading to the moat before she got separated from him by their shadows, forced to retreat back towards the tower for Isshin.

 

That’s not entirely true.

 

Kuro is Wolf’s responsibility, and she has no doubt he will return in the nick of time for the boy, but she helped him as she could, and will not lose more time over him, because she has more pressing matters to tend to.

 

Two, to be exact.

 

The tower holds the shortcut to the shrine.

 

The castle is ablaze, and there’s an uneasy feeling in her stomach. The view from the top of the castle is incredible, but the flames extend far to the west. They took the outskirts, she knows that, but the ministry had no need to unleash such firepower on what paltry remnants of walls remained, still crumbling, yet to be repaired after Isshin’s coup.

 

She needs to see the Sculptor, needs to quell the bitter anxiety churning within her gut.

 

She also needs to find Isshin. That part was no lie.

 

Lord Isshin kneels in Kuro’s chambers, watching Ashina burn through one of the small windows therein.

 

_Lord Isshin. Why have you left your chambers?_

_The Divine Heir – is he not with you?_

_I have seen him to safety, My Lord, since his retainer is away. Should you not be guarding your blade, since we both know your grandson will return for it, if he has not already?_

Isshin smiles, a wry grin, and she can feel her blood boil.

 

_You’ve let him take it?_

_He can do no lasting harm, Emma, weak and pitiful creature as he is now. A couple of swings at most._

_He’s not in his right mind – he’s ill, and one swing is more than enough for someone-_

For someone mortal. Or immortal, with that blade.

 

_I need to head to the shrine. The sculptor is unwell, and this certainly will not help matters. Be safe._

_You cannot. There is nothing you can do for him._

She grips the hilt of her blade. _We both know that isn’t true, Lord Isshin. You trained me otherwise._

_He may be the only thing giving Sekiro's young lord – giving all Ashina – a chance._

_You want me to leave him to his own devices, to set him on the ministry, for the sake of your crumbling empire? I have seen the walls, Lord Isshin. There is no Ashina._

_Emma, I have trained you to kill Shura-_

_-then let me go. Let me put him out of his misery._

_-but you owe this man no loyalty. The inferno of his anger scorched the land, took everything from you. You need not chase him out of pity._

She can see the glint of fire in his eyes, reflecting from the courtyard, a spark of red. She knows that look. She recognizes the feeling.

 

A deep, burning hunger.

 

The shadow of Shura.

 

-and she puts the pieces together, and before Isshin has the chance to draw a blade, hers is buried deep in his spinal cord.

 

There is a sick glimmer of pride in his expression, even as he slumps to the ground. She doesn’t have time for this. _Hesitation is defeat, Isshin. You taught me that._

Of course, Wolf chooses the perfect time to finally return from Fountainhead Palace, bursting through the stairwell, not bothering to conceal the sound of his footsteps, too concerned for his lord’s welfare.

 

He stops at the sight of them both, catches the sight of Isshin’s blade half drawn, scans the room, and looks to Emma for an explanation.

_Death seemed to follow in his shadow. He has succumbed to his illness and passed away._

Wolf looks from her, bloody-bladed, to Isshin’s corpse, pooling on the floor, and raises an eyebrow. _His illness?_

_Terminal._

_Where’s the Divine Heir?_

_I saw him to the secret passage out and locked the door behind. I have business to tend to – the Sculptor, he is-_

_I can go, if you wish, but-_

_You have your duty, Wolf. I have mine._

Someone has boarded the shortcut up – she has to claw through felled trees to shove the passage open, grunting with the effort.

 

She finds a desolate shrine, bereft of her quarry – her _monkey, her friend, Orangutan –_ but not forsaken altogether. Fujioka hurriedly packs clay pots into a trunk at the base of the main building, framed by the smoldering ofuda she once so lovingly painted – now cinders.

 

Inside, the sculptures are rent asunder. Some smashed to pieces, others cower in fear. She never saw the wrath in them that he did.

 

He is gone. But he left this man alive, so she still has time.

 

Fujioka claims he stumbled off, muttering something about the flames.

 

Towards the battlefield, then.

 

This is what she was raised for, was it not? To cut Shura down? Isshin, damn him, was right – she will not let him take everything from these people, not like he took from her, and she will not let Isshin win, let him play the Sculptor against the ministry to give his crumbling empire a fool’s chance.

 

Orangutan was her friend. She will find him, and she will bring him from the brink, or grant him the mercy he deserves.

 

Or else she will watch another young orphan, years down the line, make the same excuses when she wanders the battlefields aimlessly, burning and angry and hungry, for answers and vengeance and _anything_ but this.

 

He is easy enough to find, after that. She simply follows the trail of flames – of burning foliage, of roofs and watchtowers set alight, of screams and cannon fire. It is only once she crests the outskirts of Ashina Castle, the great wall beside the sprawling, blazing battlefield below, that the dizzy feeling in her stomach solidifies into certainty.

 

A massive, hulking monkey dances, tearing apart a soldier with one foot and an arm of pure flame. He rends the man in two and tosses half towards a fellow before crushing a third beneath his foot in a stomp hard enough to send a nearby watchtower crumbling to the ground.

 

It is him. She is certain. His form is… _twisted,_ inhuman, all the ribs far too prominent, every bone gaping from under too-thin skin, but the beard is familiar, and his expression, hateful as it is, reminds her of him. Of the way he concentrates on his work.

 

In all the years she has known Orangutan, she has never seen him fight.

 

She pauses, inhales deeply, and unsheathes her blade in a swift motion.

 

She will never see him fight.

 

The creature before her turns its burning head in her direction as she hops onto the packed soil of the field, broken wood snapping beneath her feet, and assumes a _mie_ , stamping the ground, inviting her challenge.

 

They are not like Wolf. They are not Isshin, or Genichiro. They both _hate_ it here, the battlefield, the suffocating smell of flames and thick, caustic smoke. The reeking of burning flesh, how the particles stick to the membranes of her nostrils, how it’s impossible to avoid breathing it in, all the bodies around them, her own too, as he catches her side with his impossibly long reach, the incorporeal blazing inferno of a limb.

 

He groans, and she sobs, and ducks, as he spins around and slams both fists into the ground where she was just standing.

 

It is grueling.

 

It is a battle of endurance, then, and she will win.

 

She does not have enough dousing powder, what little she has of the waters runs dry, but she will not stop until she is dead or he is-

 

-until he stops.

 

He sweeps down to grab at her with his flesh arm and she goes for a grapple, stabbing her blade into the meat of his forearm to propel herself upward. She must go for the eyes, because this creature’s anatomy is almost entirely foreign to her, but it could do with a little less depth perception.

 

How fitting, then, that without an eye, it can finally recognize what’s in front of it.

 

_Emma._ The creature’s voice is muffled and raspy with pain, and it stares at her lidded with the one eye that has no blade jammed through the socket as she dangles from a horn.

_Orangutan._

It pleads. It begs her to finish him. It does not pull her off its face and dash her to the floor.

 

She will deliver the blow then, but she will spend the rest of her life wondering if there was a way she could have avoided it.

 

Wolf runs onto the battlefield as she falls, tearing through the creature’s chest with her blade. She will undoubtedly be scarred from the blast of flames.

 

Before her, a shriveled old man lies in a pool of too-dark blood, burnt, half blind, and curled in on himself as he dies.

 

_I did not keep my promise to you._

_No… I am… I’m so sorry, child. My promise… is the one-_

She shakes her head, hushes him. They do not have time left to talk.

 

One last kindness.

 

She reaches into her ruined robes and pulls out the crushed remains of a rice ball Kuro gave her. It’s beyond charred, and part of the squashed corners are bloodied, but she breaks off a piece and puts it in his hand as the old man snorts at her.

 

To second chances.

 

Orangutan dies with a smile on his face and no rage in his eyes.

 

***

 

Ashina burns.

 

He watches the castle and its walls smoldering from the silvergrass fields that he’s holed up in, dressing his wounds, sleeping off death, desperately praying for redemption. The multi-story fall from the castle’s peak did not help matters, adding contusions and broken bones to the lightning burns and the deep punctures from the Shinobi’s blade. The rejuvenating sediment mends what it can, but the tissues knit themselves back together all wrong, the scar tissue growing too quickly, and his body is a mess of pain and still-open wounds.

 

He misses Emma. As a friend as well as a doctor – he would kill for a bottle of sake and a friend. Or some food.

 

Or a chance at fixing this.

 

And yet Ashina still burns, without him. The battle rages on overhead, and he sits in the field feeling sorry for himself with his grandfather’s sword, thrown from the battlements shortly after he jumped.

 

A pretty clear message, if you ask him. Don’t bother returning without fixing this.

 

He groans as one of the lacerations across his ribs splits _again,_ damn it all, he has to get up there, he can take the Shinobi now, he has the mortal blade, even if it was thrown at him like an afterthought, because he _can_ fix this, he will not watch them pillage and poison and burn his country to the ground. He will not fail Isshin again.

 

He cannot fail Isshin again, or there is no point to surviving this long.

 

There is a rustling in the grass, and he turns sharply on his heel, aiming his bow towards what he assumes is a stray creature, run from the chaos – a cricket from the moat, or else a wounded blackhat badger, something small crawling over here to die.

 

And he shakes his head.

 

Fate truly has a wicked sense of humor.

 

The Divine Heir himself stares up at his mangled torso, wide-eyed and afraid.

 

_You lived._

_Brat._

_You fell from the castle’s peak._

_I see your hound spared you the horror of my atrocities, then. How kind of him._ He keeps the arrow trained firmly on the boy, though he knows it’ll do no good. He just wants to keep him scared shitless.

 

It’s all his fault, after all.

 

He should have just listened. And now Ashina burns, just for him, and isn’t he lucky? He gets to see the fighting this time, and if he’s extra lucky, he’ll get to watch people hacking their lungs out in crumbling homes afterwards.

_Lord Genichiro, please._

The boy’s hands are up, and Genichiro can see now how filthy he is. He must have snuck through the sewers, swam the moat.

 

The arrow stays. _You’ve finally seen war, boy. And it’s all for your sake._

His eyebrows furrow, expression shifting into one of frustration, as he lowers his arms. _People have shed blood over my body since the day I was born, Lord Genichiro. It is not something you need to remind me of._

_Oh, have I finally touched a nerve?_

_No, but you don’t need to point out the obvious. And I’m not giving you my blood._

He unsheathes the mortal blade.

 

The Divine Heir’s eyes go wide. _Where did you get that?_

_They say you can’t bleed, Divine Heir._

_Lord Genichiro-_

_This can fix that._

The Divine Heir yells. _Please, just wait **five** seconds._

He has never heard the boy lose his temper, not even when he disarmed the shinobi, kicked him to the well’s bottom, hell, not even when he was a child at his uncle’s funeral.

 

The boy breathes heavily. _We are. We are planning to sever it. You’re right. Too much blood has been shed over this, among other things. I’m going to die tonight, so if you can wait for Wolf to get here, I’d really like to make sure I die properly so this problem doesn’t repeat itself._

His grip on the blade slackens, just a hair. He was not expecting this.

_Emma is coming too, and I’m sure she can take a look at your wounds-_

_You’re going to **what?**_

_Wolf is going to return from his mission with what we need, he’s going to come find me here, and he’s going to sever it. The Dragon’s Heritage. And my head, when I ask it of him-_

_You’re going to damn us all for your conscience?_ He holds the blade to the boy’s face, the end smoking where it nicks the skin of his cheek, drawing blood and a small gasp. This is ridiculous. He’s going to throw everything away out of what?

 

Spite?

 

_My curse is the source of this corruption, Lord Genichiro._

_Your immortality is a means to an end. Even you have to see the value there._

A small hand reaches for the edge of the mortal blade, and the boy groans as he struggles to push the edge from his face, digging it into the meat of his palm instead.

 

_You’re right. But this isn’t a power any one person should have._

_You could bestow it to hundreds. Why think small?_

_Do you… do you not know?_

_Don’t toy with me, brat._

_Lord Genichiro, where do you think the life force comes from?_

He knows where his derived – the sediment he snorted, the crude powder that still burns too hot within his bloodstream. The Shinobi’s, oddly enough, he’s never given much thought other than to marvel at in the heat of battle.

 

_When… when he dies… where-_

He tilt’s the boy’s chin up with the edge of his blade.

 

Enough of these games. The storm is rolling in, the shift in humidity bringing a welcome reprieve in terms of his capability to function at range, but the patchwork of scar tissue across his torso aches to his core, and he will not play any longer.

 

_The Dragonrot!_

The boy’s eyes are desperate, challenging.

 

_He pulls from the lives of the surrounding people, Lord Genichiro. It’s how the disease spreads._

There’d been another outbreak in the castle, since he’d returned with the boy. Emma had done her best to treat the afflicted, and managed to come up with something akin to a breakthrough, but they both knew there was only so much that could be done.

 

He knew that all too well.

 

He pulls back the blade and punches the Divine Heir square in the gut.

 

The young lord stumbles back, clutching his bloodied hand to his abdomen. _This is exactly why-_

They both pause. Rapid footsteps, moving quickly through the silvergrass.

 

_Lord Kuro!_

An ill-timed stray, here to intercede on his master’s behalf. The boy holds a hand out to stop him, evidently keen on maintaining some dignity, though Genichiro’s quite certain between the two of them, they don’t have a whole lot left.

 

The Shinobi has a little, though. He’s noticed the blood, noticed the blade, and _oh,_ _yes,_ bears one of his own.

 

Only one of them can walk away from this.

 

There will be no more talking.

The Divine Heir curls his bloodied hand and stares him down. _Genichiro, if you think you can change Ashina’s fate with such a thing-_

Clearly he didn’t get the memo. He gives a pointed look at the Shinobi.

 

_If you want your own chance to behead the boy before I’m through with you, tell him to shut his mouth._

 

The boy glares, the Shinobi exhales sharply.

 

_Don’t speak to him like-_

_Nobody is beheading Lord Kuro. Where did you find that blade?_

_I’m done answering questions._

_One last time._

_Yes. Let’s finish this._

 

It is such a sick parody of their first match. The Shinobi’s turned the tables on him, caught him cobbling the broken pieces of his body together from the brink of death after weeks of licking his own wounds. Last time they fought as equals, and the time before was like kicking a sick puppy, a broken thing that only just begun to perk up. In a better world, they’d have made excellent sparring partners.

 

The Divine Heir’s dog’s will to live has never been stronger. Now he’s the one whose stabs are desperate and unwieldy, who finds himself battling mind and body alike to even keep up in the frenzied rush to live – to _win,_ he _must_ – never mind land a hit.

He makes the mistake of glancing over at the boy, the frantic notion of rolling over to use him as a shield for a momentary reprieve running through his head, and is caught off guard by his pitiful stare and in the shoulder by an Ichimonji slash, and _damn it,_ that hurts, because he could only have learned that from one person, there’s no chance, he will-

 

The Shinobi was an honorable man, once.

 

He doubles over in the grass, raises his left hand in surrender, and bites his lip in a silent prayer to Tomoe’s strange heretic gods that they have mercy on the mangled remains of his soul and the Shinobi doesn’t hack it off like he really ought to.

 

Especially given what he’s planning.

 

He knows what Grandfather expects of him.

 

There’s a beat, and then the sound of two footsteps backwards.

 

He opens an eye.

 

The Shinobi’s sword is still raised, pointed in his direction should he try anything, and he’s positioned himself between the Divine Heir and Genichiro, but he’s staring cautiously.

 

_Fine. You’re all right. In the end, what I’ve done…. I was powerless, but…_

_Grandfather was not._

He’s been powerless his whole life. What little actionable capacity he had, he'd had to cling to, and it was ripped from him by the fucking immortals, by the ministry, by the war dogs, by stupidly loyal Shinobi who can’t bother to stay dead. By stupidly loyal retainers who’d die for an unkillable child but not for their own student.

Wolf shakes his head. _Isshin… You really think his judgement is superior to your own?_

_Have you seen me?_

_Have you seen him, lately? He’s lying in a pool of his own blood. He hired a man to spend all day on the back of a kite in case I walked across a rooftop. Lower your blade._

_I cannot forsake my country or my grandfather so easily._ It will take one moment. He will not fail in this.

 

The sound of rustling draws the eyes of both men as a woman stumbles through the passageway into the silvergrass, bedraggled and burnt, cloths rent and charred at the seams. Emma limps through the field on a makeshift splint, ramshackle even for her field work – she must have been trying to move quickly. Her hair has fallen half down and is burnt in places, uneven at the ends, matching the angry red blisters across her forearms and legs.

_Genichiro? You survived the fall?_

There’s a flicker of hope in her voice, and it’s too much to process after the crushing ache of the last couple weeks. He presses the blade to the skin of his throat. He will not fuck this up. Tomoe taught him that much, at least.

 

She looks frantically from the Shinobi, who shrugs, to him, pausing only out of shock, to the boy, pale at what might be the first sight of his own blood – imagine that – back to Genichiro.

 

_I killed Isshin._

_He was old, he’d have fought if he could, he can still repel the ministry, fix both of our mistakes. We can fix that – I can fix it, I can-_

_Because you want to?_

He wants, desperately, above all else _,_ to _fix this._ To go back home, to Ashina Castle, to receive a passing nod of approval from his grandfather, because that’s really the best someone like him can hope for, and get drunk out of his mind on sake with Emma.

 

_Or because that’s what Isshin wanted to goad you into doing, when he threw that sword out the window without a second thought for if you survived the drop?_

_Fuck you._ He spits blood into the dirt.

 

He can’t fucking _think._

_You were a scapegoat, someone to take the fall. I was a knife in the shadows. There was a reason he went hunting for the desperate. He wanted tools – puppets – not children. It took watching him set a Shura on the ministry to get me to open my eyes. I’m not sure how to get you to open yours, but-_

The Divine Heir turns his head sharply. _There’s a SHURA loose in Ashina?_

The Shinobi nods slowly, then tilts his head side to side.

 

Emma bites her lip, but does not turn towards the boy, does not take her eyes off Genichiro, off the hilt in his hand, off the blade at his neck. _There was. We’ve all made mistakes tonight. I set him at peace._

Genichiro stares at her, the burns across her skin. The pain and mournful rage in her eyes burns in his own.

 

He saw the behemoth from a distance, the flames cresting over the walls. It reminded him of stories she told him of her childhood. He thought he was imagining things, that the smoke was getting to him.

 

Slitting his throat would be the honorable thing to do. Redeeming Ashina, fulfilling Grandfather’s wishes.

 

He’s always been a dishonorable bastard.

 

The mortal blade hits the dirt a moment before his knees do.


	3. Chapter 3

He does not remember the last time he has been hugged, but for all he knows, it could have also been Emma. They’ve hugged before, after they got wasted on Ashina sake by the old serpent shrine and he interrogated her for all the gory details surrounding Tomoe’s death against his own better judgement. Neither of them really knew how to handle things.

 

This one is just as much a mixture of desperately welcome and physically unbearable, and he can’t imagine she’s faring much better, given the state of her arms. All the wounds he’d managed to stitch have either been rent asunder from the exertion or split by the Shinobi’s blade.

_Wolf._ The Divine Heir looks them all over. _When I’m- When what must… be done is done, please-_

_My Lord, I need to admit, I have not been forthcoming._

_Wolf, what do you mean?_

_A code is determined by the individual. That was what I decided, the day I- when Owl threatened you. You ordered me to help you seek severance, despite the fact that it would render you mortal._

_Yes._

_And you were not forthcoming either._

The boy flushes.

 

_Forgive me if I was reluctant to see you die in an act of self-sacrifice if there was any agreeable alternative._

Emma goes taut in his arms.

 

_Lady Emma agreed to assist me. Lord Takeru’s retainer, Lady Tomoe, attempted to lay her own life down in exchange for her lord’s._

The Divine Heir shakes his head. _You will not die for me, Wolf. I will not ask that of you. You’ve died more than enough._

_I would, willingly, without telling you, but it hardly seemed right. But I do not have to._

The Shinobi pulls a small vial from within his pocket, holding strange, glistening crystals that twist like fluid, refracting what little starlight breaches the clouds as they wind their way around the glass interior, almost serpentine in nature.

 

_The Divine Child of Rejuvenation believes there has been enough death._

_***_

 

Deep in the Illusory Halls of Senpou Temple’s sanctum, five orphans gather their things and prepare for a long journey to the west. Each one of them travels for their own reasons, but all seek redemption.

 

Seek restitution.

 

_Return._

 

They do so out of desire to break the cycle that Takeru and Tomoe evidently failed so catastrophically at both because they were the ones who survived, but mainly because they knew all too well the cost of failure.

 

There would be no other battles fought over this bloodline, on these battlefields, in the broken, poisoned land of Ashina. It would not claim the lives of more innocents, the sanity of more corruptible, ambitious men. They would see to its safe return.

 

It was never a gift. It was never a birthright. Divine Heir is a title of mortal men, but there will never be another. Nobody else will die for him, will kill for him (or kill to _get to him_ ), will wage wars over the contents of his body.

 

He has spent too long being a thing. He’s looking forward to embracing the best parts of the gracious gift of mortality.

 

There will be no more grooming desperate children into soldiers, an extension of the self – a bruised, battered prosthesis. War orphans will not be raised like pigs to the slaughter. There will be no new Divine Heir for another Owl to match a protégée of his to as retainer.

 

For he will stand by Kuro till his dying breath.

 

The chaotic warfare, the bloodlust, once ceased, would too cease to fuel the hunger deep within the souls of man – the poisonous longing of Shura – and the burning rage of loss and grief. She will fulfill her purpose, but will do so on her own terms. She’s a doctor, and she will shed no more blood. She knows better than anyone what it feels like to _starve._

 

It’s the Shura’s turn.

 

There will be no more experiments within the bowels of Senpou Temple. At her behest, Sekiro has purged the infested, retrieved the records of what was done to captive victims – the inexcusable pursuit of satisfaction at the expense of innocent lives, of human dignity – and surrendered it into her care. The monkey spirits, she decides, have the right to decide for the both of them what to do with the papers. She gives herself the freedom to abstain from having to make the choice whether to burn them in pursuit of catharsis or keep it all as a testament to their memory. But there will be no more immortals, and no more incentive to play at enlightenment with scalpels and parasites.

 

Except her. But only for a short while.

 

Others will not be driven to similar lengths of desperation, not if he can help it. He cannot stay within Ashina, and he is not certain he wants to see it any more. It has a poison of its own making, a corruption in the groundwater, that needs time to disperse before he can stomach it again. Maybe he wants to see the source of the great lightning. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

 

Maybe none of them do. Maybe none of them are.

 

That night, months ago, Emma patched them all up in the Illusory halls, her fingers still shaking from the evening’s exertion. She cared for Kuro first, on Wolf’s insistence, bandaging his hand and doing what she could for him, but spent most of the night stitching the three of them up. Between the deep, cauterized wounds in Wolf’s side – _Don’t ask. Red-eyed Nightjars. Isshin must have publicized the location of your stash –_ her own burns, and the patchwork mess of Genichiro’s torso, they’ve all drunk more than enough sake by the time they all get their bearings, hours later, once she’s finally done. Both Divine Children sleep the shock to their systems off: Kuro, pale and feverish, shivering beneath layers of blankets as countless bodily functions adjust to the new threat of mortality, and the nameless girl resting soundly under the guard of several monkeys, strangely unbothered by the chill in the air.

 

It’s Wolf who speaks first, staring at Kuro’s limp form with a strange, hard look in his eye.

 

_I did the same thing as a child._

The others stare. It is the first thing he has said all evening other than brief responses to Emma’s inquiries about his wounds and a gentle greeting to both the divine child and the kind-faced monk.

 

_I grabbed my father’s sword, and dared him to stab me with it. I think I was hoping he would. I was younger, though._

Wolf takes another sip.

 

_Took him a couple years to actually do it._

 

Emma passes him the bottle. _Here’s to you winning, though. Surviving. Didn’t seem right to celebrate at the tower. After today – after Isshin, feels a bit... more right._

_Oh, no. He uh…_

Wolf’s voice cracks.

 

_Hirata. He orchestrated Hirata. Killed me there. Took me a while to remember it._

He turns to Genichiro, eyes uncertain, like there’s a hint of a memory flittering across them, struggling to maintain a hold on a particular portion of his composure. They are also, for the first time Genichiro remembers, even thinking back to the funeral after the Hirata massacre, a deep brown. _First resurrection leave your memory a bit fuzzy for a while too?_

Genichiro shakes his head. He remembers _everything._ And the immediate subsequent pain of his second death, his second resurrection, the incomplete healing, the bones crushing together from the impact on hard stone-

 

Wolf shrugs. _Hmph. Anyway._ _Thanks for not killing him before I got there._

There’s a moment, where time moves slowly. A gentle snow falls through the illusory temple, though never seeming to blanket the walkways around them. Kotaro sits in meditation beside the Divine Children, humming a soft melody that lingers in the air. The three of them sit slumped against the walls of the room, on a makeshift couch of what few now bloodstained cushions Emma had them gather together.

 

They are a mess of blood and scars and impropriety and failed expectations, resting sweat-slick hair on bandaged shoulders, clinging to each other in a maelstrom.

 

But for the first time in what feels like forever, it feels like just maybe, perhaps, they can pick up the pieces of this broken world.

 

_Sorry for cutting your arm off. Thanks for the alcohol. And the rice._

_Kuro made the rice. Thank him, when he wakes up._

***

In the mountains, far to the west, a band of five orphans march as a strange new family through snow and ice.

 

A disgraced shinobi stands proudly by the side of his former master, torn free of iron shackles. A doctor and a former general march by his side, tightly bundled in warm garb and marveling at the view. Two children converse excitedly about their destination, the horrors behind them momentarily forgotten.

 

Lightning flashes in the distance near the peak of the mountain.

 

They are so close, they can almost taste it.


End file.
